How the Chicago Showdown Failed

As was expected, the Chicago Showdown, the massive protest against the efforts of the financial industry to lobby against reform of the financial system, drew many thousands of protesters from across the country to engage in three days of protests against the government support of the greed and larceny of the banking industry.

It was a pretty good protest, as they go, what with the requisite marches and chanting and prayer vigils and some really great costumes, though somehow it failed to evoke enough guilt among the attendees to ruin their enjoyment of a Roaring-20s-themed party, the irony of which was not lost on anyone but the party-goers themselves. Obviously, no one at the American Bankers Association convention gave much consideration to that first great American debt debacle that ended with a decade-long depression, or at least not enough to see any parallels between the multiple speculative bubbles of the 1920s, in land and financial instruments alike, that parallel the vastly more intricate, layered, and global scams of the 2000s.

But the message of the protest was lost, for it was too obvious that many of the protesters suffered from the same disease as the financial fraudsters, which was the idea that somehow the universe owes them "gimmes" and guarantees against losses and respite from the consequences of bad judgment, thoughtless risk-taking, and yes, greed. But the protesters seemed oblivious to the parallels between the greed and deliberate insanity of the financial maniacs who raked in the obscene profits from the ten-year rampage, and their own greed, gullibility, and willful blindness.

The bulk of the protesters were demanding, not an end to the entire structure of socialistic housing "affordability" programs and alphabet soup of federal agencies and GSAs that enabled the greed stampede, but only that they, too, be "rescued" from the consequences of their greed, delusional thinking, and bad judgement, as Senator Durbin and the protesters demanded that the $23 Billion in bonuses being given out to Goldman Sacks executives instead be donated to help people stay in homes in foreclosure. Nobody suggested that those bonuses instead be remitted back to the treasury and to the taxpayers at large, who paid them.

Granted, many people there were genuine victims- people who lived and operated honestly and borrowed prudently within their means, only to be done out of jobs and then homes by the vicious reversal of the fake good times produced by the spate of debt-driven "growth". However, for every person who is losing his home to business reversals or job losses, there are four or five who are in foreclosure because they bought much more house than they ever had reason to think they could afford with loans that they knew, or should have known, were suspect, or who withdrew all the equity in their houses to buy cars and boob jobs and other extravagances,and are no more deserving of gifts from the public till than the financial managers attending the convention were to their bailouts and mega-bonuses.

As in most con games, most of the victims here were absolutely complicit in their destruction, and are not entitled to be "rescued" from foreclosure and loss of homes they never honestly owned to begin with. But most of all, we have all, from the low-income buyers borrowing to buy middle-bracket homes on subprime pay-option loans clear up to the Goldman Sachs bonus babies who are enabled by our government in skimming the taxpayers for decades to come to pay this year's bonus, contributed to the mentality that produced the casino economy of the past 20 years, a mentality made up in equal parts of greed, magical thinking, and a boundless sense of entitlement to unearned rewards.

Couldn't Happen to Nicer People: ACORN Loses its Federal Funding

Both Congress and the Senate voted overwhelmingly to strip the community activist group, ACORN, of its federal funding amidst allegations that the group counseled its clients on how to commit tax fraud and other crimes. Last week 11 ACORN workers in Florida were charged with submitting fraudulent voter registration papers, and most disturbing of all, ACORN workers are alleged to have aided in human traffic, including the recruiting of underage girls into prostitution.

Many of us here in the 49th Ward of Chicago remember the role this unsavory group played in the hotly contested city election of 2007. ACORN activists worked to help re-elect the incumbent alderman, Joe Moore, and distributed "attack" fliers that slandered and vilified his opponent's supporters, including myself.

It's rather a shame, really. ACORN started out in the 70s as a grass-roots activist group whose mission was to help lower utility rates and provide affordable housing for the poor. Since that time, the group has degenerated into a blatantly political action group that advocates for favored candidates and engages in questionable and perhaps illegal practices on behalf of people who distinctly aren't poor or disadvantaged.